The Internet has opened up a whole new marketing opportunity for the “working girl,” “lady of the evening,” or “call girl”. The trade actually uses the title “sex trade worker,” a gender-neutral term that almost appears at first glance as benign as “construction worker” or “landscaper”. Despite being illegal, the prostitution trade still flourishes, not only under the guise of a high-class escort service or on a drug-infested street corner, but hidden among the online personal ads of Craigslist and eBay, as well as more openly on sites such as SeekingArrangement.com, “The Premier Dating Website for Sugar Daddies, Mommies, & Babies”. The description of what a Sugar Daddy or Mommy might want is rather obvious. Here’s how the website describes it:
Rich and successful. Single or married, you have no time for games. You are looking to mentor or spoil someone special—perhaps a “personal secretary”? Secret Lover? Student? Or a mistress for an extramarital affair?
Equally obvious is the Sugar Babe description:
Attractive, ambitious, & young. Sugar Babes are college students, aspiring actresses, or someone just starting out. You seek a generous Benefactor to pamper, mentor, and take care of you—perhaps to help you financially?
We’re not saying outright that this is a prostitution site, but any site that claims to promote “mutually beneficial relationships… perhaps to help you financially” doesn’t leave much to the imagination. In its description of an “arrangement,” the site explains, “Such a relationship is usually between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship, or intimacy”.
The Sugar Baby can look at profiles of potential benefactors and pick out a gentleman worth between $750,000 to $1,000,000 with a profile name such as “Daddy Big Bucks”. The Sugar Baby posts profiles listing what he or she expects as a monthly income from a potential Sugar Mommy or Daddy, as well as what he or she can be expected to do for the benefactor of choice. By the way, if you can’t find what you’re looking for there, the site recommends you visit its “sister” sites: SeekingMillionaire.com and SeekingFantasy.com.
Interestingly enough, these types of “mutually beneficial relationships” can be found on Craigslist as well, with young men and women looking for someone to generously provide for them in exchange for a no-strings-attached relationship that includes sex. Whether it is a Sugar Daddy with a Sugar Baby, or male escort or call girl, the common denominator here is that the transaction includes money for sex.
The Internet connects people with common interests and allows the deviants and miscreants of society to anonymously find others of their perversion with whom to communicate and even form their own social groups. This is certainly no different for an individual with special sexual interests. Whether it is the W4M (woman seeking man), M4M (man seeking man), ww4mm (two women looking to party with a couple of guys), or the bi-m4wm (bisexual man looking for a bisexual couple), the Internet provides a wide array of possibilities. Perusing Craigslist in the personal section for casual or erotic relationships, one can easily locate ads that are actually soliciting sex in exchange for money, whether it be the “John” seeking a quick rendezvous while in town or the paid “sex worker” looking for a quick income.
For instance, you might come across something like this:
Waz up? My name is Amber and I’ll be visiting Philadelphia for two days. I am 21 years old, 5′4″ tall, 120 lbs, and 31C-24-29 with black hair, blue eyes, and a tight ass. I love candy, especially lollipops, and for the right man and lots of roses, I would even travel to Greece and GFE. Maybe BBBJ and CIM, definitely DATY!
Let’s translate. Amber is a call girl, looking for some clients in Philadelphia for the next two days. She is advertising that she will perform oral sex (“lollipop”) without a condom (“BBBJ,” or “bareback blow job”), allow the client to perform oral sex on her (“DATY,” or “dining at the Y”) and even allow the client to ejaculate in her mouth (“CIM”). She will provide the “girlfriend experience” (“GFE”) and engage in anal sex (“trip to Greece”) for the right amount of cash (“roses”). An email or call to Amber will confirm her availability, exactly how many “roses” it will cost, and if she will do in-call or out-call (whether she will go to you or you to her). For clarification, while some like the girlfriend experience (GFE), others prefer “PSE” or the “porn star experience” with a sexually aggressive escort.
You might also see the guy posting in the same personals section of Craigslist seeking part-time office help between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. a couple of days a week for the girl who has wanted to act out fantasies with her boss. This “boss” suggests that “excellent oral skills would be helpful” and that the job offers $500 per week as a “cash bonus for someone really open-minded”. Connecting the dots should be relatively simple here.
Our personal favorite is the following:
Exhibitionist. Cross-dresser. Available to entertain you and your girlfriends… retired… you lead me to the bathroom where you have my outfit laid out… wig/makeup or hood me… slave… bondage, CBT… gentleman… clean shaven, hung, D/D free… treat yourself.
This was from an actual posting in February of 2008 from a “gentleman” who titled his ad “Submissive TV for you and your girlfriends-m4ww”. This is a TV (or transvestite) who is into dressing up and being dominated and who is drug and disease free (D/D). Initially we were at a loss for what CBT stood for; however, with the help of Internet search engines, we were easily able to find that this older man is into “c*ck and ball torture”. Ouch.
Craigslist ads run daily, so there is never a lack of opportunities from which to choose, at all hours of the day and night. If an ad is reported as violating terms or being offensive, Craigslist will flag and remove it. However, there are so many ads that they are difficult to police. Within minutes, plenty more will take the place of the offensive one just removed. Despite the creative play on words and cutesy descriptors, these ads are exactly what they appear to be—online sex solicitations in exchange for money.
A quick search of the other auction sites, such as eBay, Yahoo!, Amazon, and even Priceline.com, reveal ads for “escort services,” some of which are in fact legitimate. However, we know from experience that this is a new venue for male and female sex trade workers to auction their services. In fact, they do actually auction themselves, just like someone would put up for bid a football autographed by an NFL star.
In March of 2008, federal authorities arrested four subjects involved with a prostitution ring that had 50 prostitutes available to travel to cities all over the country, as well as London and Paris, for prices between $1,000 and $5,000 an hour. An unsealed federal affidavit revealed the online prostitution ring to be known as the “Emperor’s Club”. The business had an application process for the prostitutes as well as booking agents for appointments with clients. The website provided a scale to rate the women, from one to seven “diamonds”. The women rating seven diamonds were considered to be the “cream of the crop” and commanded up to $3,000 per hour. An “escort” could be arranged through the agency or chosen directly through the website, with the more elite clients shelling out $5,500 an hour for the coveted “Icon Club” package. The FBI, as well as the Internal Revenue Service, investigated the Emperor’s Club. Charges filed included prostitution, conspiracy to violate federal prostitution laws, and money laundering.
In December of 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the results of the Innocence Lost Initiative, a 5-day nationwide sweep targeting criminals involved in trafficking children for prostitution in the United States. The stings, dubbed “Operation Cross Country,” spanned 16 cities and resulted in the arrest of 389 people and the recovery of 21 children.
The program was initially launched in 2003 as a joint effort between the FBI, the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscurity Section (CEOS), and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Five years later, Innocence Lost ended. More than 400 child victims were rescued and more than 300 individuals were convicted of exploiting children through prostitution. Investigations uncovered schemes that ran the gamut—from prostituting children at truck stops to promoting their services on the Internet.
The initiative pinpointed 14 areas nationwide that had been determined to have a high incidence of child prostitution. Task forces consisting of state, local, and federal agencies were formed in the affected states to investigate the cases.
Among the highlighted cases were the following:
• In Kansas, Don L. Elbert, III, forced three underage sisters—two of whom were 14-year-old twins—into prostitution. He was captured and pled guilty to child sex trafficking in May of 2007. In January, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
• In Detroit, Keith Goodwin was sentenced in October of 2007 to 97 months in prison for the production of child pornography. During a search of his residence, three child victims of prostitution were recovered.
• In Atlantic City, a former U.S. Postal Service employee was sentenced in March of 2008 to 23 years in prison for operating a criminal enterprise involving 35–40 females whom he forced into prostitution. His youngest victim was 14 years old.
In August of 2007, Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Craigslist could do more to prevent being used “as a means of promoting and enabling child prostitution,” and she suggested that Craigslist revamp its warnings on erotic services to remove any postings offering sexual services. An Atlanta vice investigator even went as far as to estimate that websites such as Craigslist account for 85% of the arrangements made by men for sexual contact with boys and girls.
An article published in CNN.com in June of 2008 focused on child prostitutes selling services on Craigslist. Investigators in Sacramento, California identified 70 girls under the age of 18 who had been offering their services online. This investigation was also part of the FBI’s Innocence Lost Initiative.
Teenagers seeking to prostitute themselves post ads on Craigslist’s Erotic Services section because it is easy, free, and allows them to place many ads per day.
In July of 2008, two men were arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah for forcing a 16-year-old girl into a hotel room and placing an ad on Craigslist for her services. The two allegedly threatened to harm her family so that she would not quit working for them.
In the CNN.com special report on Craigslist and child prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster was quoted as saying that the problem would be harder to track if the erotic services category were to be removed, claiming that leaving in this category “makes it all the more easy to track illicit activity; if it’s all centralized, you can spot the illegal stuff more easily”. Buckmaster did point out that Craigslist does voluntarily work with authorities in helping to track sexual crimes.
In regard to child prostitution, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) notes that not only does the United States “face an influx of international victims of sex trafficking,” but also that the United States “has its own homegrown problem of interstate trafficking of minors”. It is estimated that 293,000 children in the United States are “at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation”. Many are at risk due to abusive family lives. Some are runaways or throwaway children, and are susceptible to becoming prostitutes for their own financial support through either forced abduction or their families making arrangements with traffickers. According to CEOS, the numbers of kids living on the streets who find themselves in commercial sex activity is staggering, with an estimated “55% of street girls engage[d] in formal prostitution”.
Child prostitution is organized with pimps and involves children in massage services, private dancing, escort services, sporting and recreational events, drinking clubs, conventions, and tourist destinations. CEOS estimates that 20% of these children become a part of organized crime networks and are transported throughout the country via various modes of transportation and assigned fake identification. According to CEOS, an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are trafficked across the U.S. borders each year for the sex trade, with some of its victims as young as 5 years old. (Source: http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos.)
Children are essentially sold into sex slavery every day, not just in the U.S., but around the globe. This suggests the sick demand for such a trade. It is not difficult to find men trolling chat rooms and message boards looking for children for sale, sometimes even for sale by their own parents. There are chat rooms in some of the more popular instant messaging sites that are commonly known for certain sexual deviance—whether it be a foot fetish or adults looking to hook up with another parent’s kids. As part of an investigation, an agency came across a man whose online profile actually stated that his interests included “incest, moms that share, and young children”. Numerous investigations have resulted in men traveling to meet who they thought was a mother interested in providing her children for sexual activity, only to be arrested by the undercover cop waiting for them at the prearranged destination.
In June of 2008, U.S. Marshals Service Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force rounded up 1,250 fugitive criminal suspects as part of Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally). One of the arrestees was a 24-year-old suspect that federal and local police had been searching for in Metro Atlanta, who had been using the Internet to search for gay men in chat rooms in order to meet them, have sex with them in their homes, and then rob them at gunpoint. He would gain their trust and convince them to let him come into their homes. He would leave after the first encounter. Then, upon returning a second time, he would bring an accomplice and rob the victims. During one of his crimes, he bound the victims with duct tape and allegedly stole $62,000 from the residence. This is one of many crimes of this type that have received national attention.
Operation FALCON, which focuses on violent felons and sex offenders, has taken more than 36,500 fugitives into custody nationwide since its inception in 2005.
The concept of prostituting a child is unfathomable to the law-abiding citizen, and yet, it is an evil reality in the darkest corners of the Internet. As we were writing this book, the following story was just unfolding. As parents and members of law enforcement, we followed every detail with baited breath and prayed for a positive outcome.
In 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas. She had been riding her bike near a closed Winn-Dixie store when a man pulled her from her bike and threw her into the front seat of his pickup truck. A neighbor heard the little girl scream and witnessed the abduction. Amber’s brother Ricky saw it also. The community rallied in search of the little girl; however, 4 days after she went missing, Amber’s body was found near a drainage ditch. Amber’s parents, Donna and Richard Hagerman, started PASO (People Against Sex Offenders), a grassroots effort to push for stronger laws, and also drafted the Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act. From this, came the idea of the AMBER Alert.
AMBER stands for “America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response”. This emergency notification system goes out to the general public by various media outlets in the U.S. and Canada. An AMBER Alert can be issued by law enforcement when they confirm that a child has been abducted. The media sources involved include commercial radio stations, satellite radio, television stations, cable television (through the Emergency Alert Broadcast System), electronic traffic condition signs, emails, and wireless device SMS text messages. Even lottery terminals are used in some states. The AMBER Alert program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry because time is of the essence whenever a child is abducted.
The Child Alert Foundation created the first automated implementation of the AMBER Alert in 1998, along with the fully automated Alert Notification System to immediately inform the public. In 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children began promoting the AMBER Alert and the distribution of alerts through media outlets.
The criteria for an AMBER Alert is issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, with specific guidelines for states to follow:
• Law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has taken place.
• The child must be at risk of serious injury or death.
• There must be sufficient descriptive information of the child, the captor, or the captor’s vehicle to issue an alert.
• The child must be 17-years-old or younger.
Despite the criteria of the child being at risk of serious injury or death, many law-enforcement agencies are foregoing that and issuing AMBER Alerts in cases of parental abduction.
Sadly, the kidnapping and murder of Amber Hagerman remains unsolved.
In 2006, 42 AMBER Alerts were issued for missing children. All 42 were safely recovered. This program works, but it works like it’s supposed to when the word can get out. What most people don’t realize is that they can receive AMBER Alerts via their cell phones. Almost every carrier has volunteered to issue AMBER Alerts via cell phones, but so far only 400,000 people have subscribed to the free service—mostly because they are not aware they can receive this service. You can help by going to https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org and adding your 10-digit cell phone to the AMBER Alert system. Every set of eyes, every added person looking, will bring these kids home safely. Please consider signing up for wireless AMBER Alerts. They don’t happen often, but when they do, time is critical.
More information and active AMBER Alerts can be found at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (pronounced nek-mek) at www.missingkids.com. For more information on the AMBER Alert program, please visit www.amberalert.gov.
Millions of people have cell phones these days. Walk into any crowded area and you’re bound to see people finalizing business deals, text-messaging their friends, downloading tunes, chatting with their loved ones, and even surfing the Internet.
But there’s another side to cell phones just beginning to emerge in the U.S. that gives us pause—the world of cellular pornography. Yes, the ability to download pornography in between phone calls!
Just to put this burgeoning industry into perspective, consider that the “Mobile Adult Content Conference” was held in Miami in January of 2008. The focus of the entire conference was on enhancing opportunities to expand the adult pornography industry to cell phones and other mobile devices. The adult pornography phone trend is seen as a way for the industry to survive in an age where free online porn sites have taken a chunk out of the profits from DVDs, videotapes, and pay-per-view or subscription websites.
More advanced cell phones with better web browsers that offer higher quality images, combined with phone companies potentially loosening control on their networks, make cell phone pornography a viable business opportunity for the adult porn industry. Other video-based industries recognize this trend. For example, YouTube.com, the video-sharing site, has plans to expand to approximately 100 million advanced cell phones. How far this goes and how quickly this may occur is yet to be seen.
Cell phone pornography in Europe was a $775-million industry in 2007, with expectations that it could grow into a $1.5-billion industry by 2012, as compared to it being only a $26-million industry in North America. New phones with better graphics and advanced web browsers, such as Apple’s iPhone (with a sales projection of 10 million units by the end of 2008), may encourage carriers to open their networks for additional revenue. This may be the catalyst for the development of “mobile porn”. Some carriers are already talking about providing web filters for the protection of minors. Time will tell how this pans out, but we are keeping a close eye on the emergence of this industry as yet another possible avenue for child pornography to be downloaded, viewed, and traded.
We want to end with a warning. In our collective and professional opinions, there is very little reason children should ever have a webcam (a camera that attaches to a computer and broadcasts images across the Internet) in their bedroom. We can understand a family wanting to broadcast video to a loved one serving in the military or to family in a distant locale, but allowing a child to have a webcam in the privacy of her bedroom is like inviting child predators to stand in the doorway of your child’s room and watch her every move. That is exactly why predators will often send a child a webcam at their own expense as a “gift” in the grooming process. Think about that.
Be smart, be safe, and do not let your children use a webcam unless you are there with them. Be mindful, too, that many newer computers have webcams built right into them.
We covered some difficult subject matter in this chapter because we want parents to understand that the Internet removes any distance barriers between the predators who will groom, recruit, and solicit children and your innocent 9-year-old Miley Cyrus fan.
Just as there is no one “profile” of a child predator, there is no “profile” of a victim. They come from all socioeconomic backgrounds and all geographic areas. The common factor is that they are often left unsupervised on the Internet. Please remember that.